“Photos should suggest a word(s) and vice versa. They should be equal and interchangeable.” Quote by John Baldessari
“Ideally I would like the work to be a hybrid between painting and photography.” PaintingPhotographyHybrid Author:John Baldessari
“I want to produce images that startle one into recollection.” WantProduceRecollection Author:John Baldessari
“Find the most puzzling kind of art you can think of, and then go out and try to approximate it with your camera. Take a photograph that corresponds to it. (Assignment to students.)” ThinkingTryingKindArtStudentsCamerasPhotographAssignmentsPuzzling Author:John Baldessari
“What I try to do is reinvigorate strategies and clichés I find in Hollywood movies. At a certain point I had these huge folders, each one classified according to subject matter or genre: people with guns, people kissing, Indians and cowboys falling off horses, getting shot, getting shot with arrows - almost every plot device. Then I cropped the cheap, recycled imagery to give exhausted images new meaning, or at least something other than their original meaning. I'm basically reassembling atoms to give them a meaning that's more au courant.” PeopleGivingTryingMatterCertainFallSubjectsHugeKissingGunShotsHollywoodHorseOriginalsStrategyGenrePlotDevicesAtomsExhaustedCowboyImageryArrowsSubject MatterHollywood MoviesFalling OffRecycledFolders Author:John Baldessari
“From the moment the tourist enters the site, everyone has to be photographed in front of every feature of note.... The photographic record of the visit has almost destroyed the very notion of actually looking.” MomentsRecordsFrontsNotesNotionDestroyedFeaturesSiteTourists Author:Martin Parr
“Beauty is not a concept. It is the animal joy of the mind.” MindJoyAnimalConcepts Author:Peter Schjeldahl
“Photography is the art of anticipation, not working with memories, but showing their formation. As such, it has relentlessly usurped imaginative and critical prerogatives of older, slower literature and handmade visual art.” ArtLiteratureMemoriesPhotographyCriticalVisualsAnticipationImaginativeFormationVisual ArtPrerogativeHandmade Author:Peter Schjeldahl
“There is an ineffable but fatal difference in attitude between people behaving naturally and people behaving naturally for a camera.” PeopleDifferencesAttitudeCamerasIneffable Author:Peter Schjeldahl
“The dominant problem of pictorial art since the nineteen-fifties is photography, and, by extension, film and video. The basilisk eye of the camera has withered the pride of handworked mediums. Painting survives on a case-by-case basis, its successes amounting to special exemptions from a verdict of history.” ArtProblemEyeFilmCasesSpecialPaintingPridePhotographyBasesCamerasVideoMediumsDominantExtensionsNineteenVerdictWitheredPictorialExemption Author:Peter Schjeldahl